High-count ribbon cables have always been a compromise. You get the density, but you pay for it in weight, stiffness and awkward handling. Ribbon cables have historically been flat ribbon, slotted core designs. These are anything but compact, with huge amounts of wasted space taking up valuable real estate.
Some of the first flexible or deformable ribbon cables also used slotted core designs, which bring all of those annoying features to a really great concept. Later designs brought in more modern designs with fibres packed into a tube, but variously these cables bundled fibres in odd ways - either wrapped in yarns or traditional style tubes. Neither is a fantastic solution. Yarns come apart and can make fibre identification difficult. Traditional tubes do not easily deform and cause the cable to take up more space than it otherwise would.
The other element of these cables is if course fibres and particularly the bonding pattern. Many designs have varying bonding types. Some capable of splicing as single fibre or ribbon - most are not, instead supporting only ribbon splicing. This is fine, except for those customers who want to either splice as single fibre circuits.
These and other challenges are ones that we wanted to work to solve in taking SmartRIBBON to market. Our design is familar yet different.
We utilise tubes, but instead of hard polymers like PBT, we use soft, flexible polymers that protect the fibres but still allow them to deform to fit optimally within the cable jacket. This lets us get to pretty good diameters, like 3456 fibres in 28.4mm, smaller than a number of other manufacturers. But importantly, it’s easier to handle and protects the fibres better than most competitors out there. The tubes can be routed in traditional ways, stripped in traditional ways, and is super-easy to prepare given they are entirely dry.
This lets us deliver a cable that is high fibre count, low diameter, and a low weight - but is also easy to use.
We think our ribbon technology is super-cool, too. It allows the ribbons to deform and flex, again for optimal fill within the cable diameter. The fibres are easy to identify, even after the tubes are stripped back, given the “tally” style marking system. An important feature is the ability to splice the fibres as either single or ribbon, allowing it to be used as a ultra-high fibre count single fibre cable.
Strength members are another area we think is a little unique in ribbon cables. SmartRIBBON uses peripheral strength members (strength members inside the jacket). We use two strength members per side, which helps to reduce preferential bend (where the cable wants to bend in one orientation and not the other). This also helps us get to a higher tensile strength.
The construction is designed for people in the field. It’s a completely dry cable, so there’s no gel to clean out. The buffer tubes are flexible and deformable, protecting the fibres all the way to the strip point and routing more easily than hard tubes or slotted cores. Identification is quick and reliable, with standard 12-fibre colours. Add in our quick-access engineered sheath, and you’ve got a rugged, installer-friendly design that saves time on every splice and joint.
We are really excited about the possibility for this cable in a variety of applications. It has huge potential for clients in both bulk cable and pre-terminated ultra-high fibre count assemblies - an excellent fit for data centre interconnect applications and high count telecom backbones.
You can find out more about our SmartRIBBON product range at on the SmartRIBBON™ product page, or reach out to me if you want to discuss options.
